


Psychiatric Help - Five Cents

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Conversation, F/M, Friendship, Romance, Some angst, self-confidence, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8609836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: When Clara has a very bad day at work, the Doctor tries to convince her that being a teacher is just as important as fighting Daleks.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my 25th piece of fan fiction uploaded to AO3.
> 
> The title is taken from the famous Peanuts comic strip.

The Doctor sat in his favourite chair, strumming his favourite guitar, trying to decide on which of his favourite tunes to play while he waited for his favourite human to join him and relieve his loneliness and boredom for a little while longer.

Ironically, for man in possession of an honest-to-God time machine, the Doctor always thought the minutes between materializing in a supply room at Coal Hill School and Clara Oswald’s smiling face appearing as she opened the TARDIS door felt like an eternity. Sure, he could simply arrive thirty seconds, fifteen seconds before Clara’s classes ended for the day, but he never wanted to take the chance of missing her. Plus, to be honest, he often liked to make himself look busy, doing something cool (today it was playing his guitar), when she came through the doors. Anything to hide the fact that most of his time these days was spent more-or-less watching the clock until he saw her again.

For The Oncoming Storm, it was verging on a domestic lifestyle. Sure, he’d head out on some adventure or another, take on a diabolical mastermind or a Dalek invasion somewhere. He even occasionally travelled with other people, like the time he took his former companions Mickey and Martha on a belated honeymoon that resulted in them rescuing an entire planet of intelligent creatures made of glass. But Clara was never far from his thoughts, to the point where Mickey suggested he should just pop the question and be done with it. The Doctor had tried to cover with one of his “Mickey the Idiot” comebacks, but wasn’t completely successful in hiding the fact his old friend had hit a bit of a nerve. 

He’d nearly let the cat out of the bag with Clara during a recent rendezvous, which had been a rather peaceful excursion for once (chasing down a troop of rogue Sontarans was quite relaxing once you got into the rhythm). They’d ended up holding hands after the Doctor landed the TARDIS back at Clara’s flat. Not too unusual, but Clara had actually had to tell him, “You can let go now.”

The Doctor still couldn’t figure out how the one-word reply, “Why?” escaped his lips, but for all the embarrassment of the unbidden sentiment, it was worth it to see her eyes dance for a moment. But he’d spent the next few days worrying that he might have overstepped a line. When he’d seen Clara again, he’d kept his distance from her, even managing to find a way to avoid one of her hugs. He’d tried to pass it off as a space cold he didn’t want to pass on to her and, by extension, her students. It wasn’t any more successful than his “Mickey the Idiot” joke earlier.

The Doctor strummed his guitar again. It was an oddly shaped instrument; Clara said it looked like it had been put together by someone who’d never actually seen a guitar before. She wasn’t wrong, but it did the job and the Doctor felt it had character.

His sensitive ears heard the turning of a key in the lock a moment before the TARDIS door opened and Clara entered.

The Doctor tried to be nonchalant about how he all but jumped up out of his chair. He tried to be subtle as he called out, “Clara!” as he crossed the control room, intent on wrapping her in a bear hug (to make up for his standoffishness earlier) and hearing her laugh again.

And he tried not to look shocked as he stopped short at Clara’s sullen expression.

“Whoa, something’s not right here. Are you okay?” he asked. 

“No. Not okay at all,” Clara said quietly as she put her purse down on the floor and hugged the Doctor half-heartedly. This wasn’t an affectionate, “you’re my best friend” hug, or one of the more intense, “you’re mine” hugs she’d started to give him (the Doctor had added researching different types of hugs to his time-filling between-Clara-visits activities). This was an “I need a hug” hug.

“What’s wrong?” the Doctor said over her shoulder.

Clara released him. “Bad day.” 

“How bad? Bad as in, ‘Lots of work to do and not enough hours in a day’ bad, which, you know, we can fix. Or bad as in, ‘Lock me inside an alien sarcophagus and submerge me under a lake in Scotland for a century and a half’ bad?”

“The second one, but without the morning breath after,” Clara said, though the Doctor was encouraged that she smiled a little at her joke.

The Doctor smiled back, but immediately frowned. “No one died, did they?” The Doctor often forgot his companions had loved ones who couldn’t regenerate; one of the few times Donna had gotten truly angry with him was when he’d honestly forgotten that her dad, Geoff, had died. The Doctor made a quick mental inventory of Clara’s loved ones; a list, he was sad to note, that was rather short these days, with few entries beyond her father and grandmother. 

“No, no. Everyone’s fine. I’m fine,” Clara said. “Really, I am. Just a bad day and I’m glad to be done with this place for a while and just be with you. I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Clara. Where would you like to go?”

“You said you once knew Agatha Christie, yeah?”

The Doctor nodded. He’d met the author a few times and they’d even travelled together briefly. He and Donna visited her at her bedside at the very end, too.

“Cool. Take me to when she was writing _Sparkling Cyanide_. I’d like to do some research.”

“How about we stop by Lizzie Borden’s place while we’re at it? She knew her way around an axe, as I recall,” the Doctor snarked back, good-naturedly.

“Sounds like a plan,” Clara said.

The Doctor immediately threw the lever that activated the TARDIS’ handbrake.

“What, Doctor? I’m joking!” Clara said quickly.

“Be that as it may, joking about murder isn’t like you and until I’m convinced you’re not Missy wearing a shimmer, I’m not taking you anywhere.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just—I’m frustrated, is all.” Clara sat down in the Doctor’s favourite chair, leaning forward with her hands on her blue tights-encased knees.

The Doctor pulled up another chair. “The Doctor is in; psychiatric help, five cents,” he said, officiously, though the _Peanuts_ gag seemed to be lost on Clara. Mind you, it was usually Clara in the Lucy role, and the Doctor as Charlie Brown, not the other way around.

“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, you know,” Clara began. “I always seemed to have a knack for it. When I was five for six, I’d set up my Power Rangers and Mum’s Barbies and give them lessons about anything that came to mind. Dad even got me a small blackboard for Christmas one year. Not much larger than that one,” she motioned to the top of one of the steps where a blank framed slate balanced on an easel.

“I’d given up on the idea by the time I met you, but travelling, seeing the stars, seeing history unfold right in front of me. It made me want to be a teacher again.” Clara reached out and grasped the Doctor’s hand. “Thank you for that,” she added as the Doctor smiled, despite being unsure of where she was going. He squeezed her hand back. To his surprise, she made no movement to let go, so he held on.

“I’ve tried my best,” Clara said. “Learned my lessons—literally and figuratively—in how to deal with kids. Borrowed shamelessly from you at times, too. I thought I was making a difference, and what I did was appreciated.”

“What happened, Clara?”

“We get reviewed every so often. The government sends inspectors around at short notice, to make sure we’re doing our job. And, well, Coal Hill didn’t do so well the last review. Apparently, the quality of teaching leaves something to be desired. Guess who they singled out as ‘needing improvement’?”

The Doctor scoffed. “You’re joking. I’ve seen you teach and you’re terrific with the kids. When I did that stint as the caretaker, the kids seemed to love you.”

“Well, the day the inspector came, it was right after that thing with Ashildr and the Vikings, which was right after that other thing with the Velosians. I hadn’t slept properly in days and I looked like hell, I made stupid mistakes and lost my temper a bit with one of the students.”

“Some students I wouldn’t mind dangling out the window. You have the patience of the Face of Boe most of the time.”

“Tell that to the inspector. They found a few faults with some of the other staff, like some weirdo football coach they hired. So they gave the school in general a below-par rating but guess who gets it in the neck? Not any of them. Me!” That last word was spat out in such a way, the Doctor unconsciously scooted his chair back a couple of inches, losing his grip on her hand in the process. “Just came from a full-out dressing down with Armitage. If he only saw some of the things we’ve seen, he’d understand I’m trying my best. Hell, he never even saw that bloody Skovox Blitzer that caused havoc just down the hall from his office. I think he’s going to fire me and if he does, I might thank him for it.”

“I’m sorry, Clara.” Bizarrely, the Doctor was reminded of the time he sat in on a dressing down delivered by the Brigadier towards one of his soon-to-be-ex-UNIT soldiers. The soldier had proven to be incompetent, and a danger to his colleagues, so the man had to go for everyone’s safety, but the Doctor still ended up feeling sorry for him as he watched him physically wilt under the combined verbal assault of both the Brigadier and Captain Yates, and was haunted by the look in the fellow’s face as he packed up his kit afterwards, his career in shambles. He hoped history wasn’t repeating with Clara.

“Not your fault,” Clara said. “I brought this on myself.”

“You’re joking. Who dragged you into all that nonsense?”

“It wasn’t nonsense, Doctor. We saved the Velosians and I was the one who suggested we help them. The Vikings thing came out of nowhere, fair enough, but we ended up saving a little girl’s life, right?”

“I still think that decision will come back to bite us eventually,” the Doctor mumbled.

“I just wish … I wish I could tell everyone what we do.”

“I thought it was an open secret at your school. What about the students you took on board my TARDIS with P.E. when all the forests went crazy?”

“You’re kidding, right? Coal Hill is like a cross-section of Earth society. Even with probably a quarter of the students being disguised Zygons, none of them seem to remember anything about, oh, say, the sky being filled with smoke and Cybermen flying about over central London a year or so ago. Hell, if I tell them the name ‘Harold Saxon’ I usually get blank stares. So, yeah, it seems like the time the world got overgrown with plants and a bunch of students got to hang out in the TARDIS was just another weird event quickly forgotten.”

“You really want people to know?”

“Maybe not the stuff UNIT’s made us keep secret like the Zygons or how many pairs of your underpants are in the Black Archive or anything…uh, I shouldn’t have said that,” she quickly added sheepishly, unconsciously imitating Hagrid. 

Before the Doctor could react, Clara quickly moved on. “I just want to be thanked once in a while. We’re not just out there having a laugh, not every day. We’re helping people, today, yesterday, tomorrow—a zillion years into the future. It’s how we roll.”

“What, you want a ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue or something? I know a guy…”

“I just … don’t feel appreciated sometimes. Here at school, or after we save the world—again. And I think you should be thanked more often, too. Every single person on this planet—including me—owes you their life. Hell, they don’t even know you’re technically the president of the whole Earth.”

“Clara,” the Doctor said with a sigh, “you know that so much of what we do together, you and me, no one will ever know about. If we save the world from the Boneless in Bristol on a Wednesday—like you did, with very little help from me, by the way—it’s perhaps better that people don’t know. We can’t accept awards for what we do. And how did this end up being about me? I thought you were complaining about the fact no one at your school likes you.”

“It wasn’t just the review. It’s been a lot of things adding up lately. You remember I told you how Missy made all the planes freeze in the sky and UNIT couldn’t find you so they called me in?”

“Yes, quite well.” The Doctor couldn’t help but smile with pride. His Clara had come a long way from that night she watched him build a quadracycle in the Maitlands’ driveway and didn’t know the Internet from an intestine. Now she was, quite literally, his second in command.

“I dropped everything at a moment’s notice to jump into the fray,” she said. “I never thought of my students once while I was on Skaro. Not once. And when Bonnie impersonated me I never showed up for school at all that day and what was the first thing you and I did after we … sorry, you … stopped the Zygon uprising?”

“We went to Disneyland in 1955 where I bought you the very first Mickey Mouse ears hat.”

“And then?”

“Victorian London to visit to Vastra, Jenny and Strax. You got sad how everyone forgot about Strax’s hatching day so you gave him your Mickey Mouse hat. Which, I might add, gave rise to a very popular Internet meme a few years ago when someone found a photo from 1897 of Strax wearing those ears …”

Clara smiled. “The point is, did I ever at any point say to you I wanted to go back to school?”

“No.”

“Remember when I used to leave my marking in the TARDIS? Caused some problems with Danny, but I felt it was so important to get done, I even had you…”

“…park the TARDIS in the Vortex for a few days so you could get caught up. Yes, I know.”

“I think Armitage did me a favour. I don’t think I want to be a teacher anymore.”

“Clara, don’t say that. You just had a bad day. Everyone has a bad day. You should see my bad days.”

“I have, actually.”

“If you were there, they weren’t my bad days. I mean my _really_ bad days.”

“Worse than Gallifrey on the last day of the Time War? What could be worse than that?”

The Doctor looked down. “Skaro, after I thought you’d, you know … and again for a while after I thought Bonnie had …” Clara put a hand on his knee and it seemed to energize him. “Right, well, that’s me talking about me. Again. Clara, you don’t want to give up teaching. I know you. I’ve seen you with your students—no, even better, I saw you with P.E. when he was a child, reassuring him about the monster that wasn’t under the bed. You’re gifted, Clara.”

“I thought you were busy trying to ‘Find Wally’ when I did all that.”

“I, uh, I was multitasking.” The Doctor stood up and walked over to the console and began pushing buttons. “The school won’t fire you. They’d be stupid to. You got a dressing down because you’d set such a high standard and, okay, you didn’t live up to it. Happens to the best of us.”

Clara joined him at the console. “I know, but my heart isn’t in it. I don’t feel like I’m making a difference anymore. Not as a teacher.”

The Doctor looked at her intently, then pressed a couple more buttons, released the handbrake, and set the TARDIS in motion.

“Where are we going?”

The Doctor ignored the question. “Clara, take out your psychic paper.”

Clara reached into a pocket and removed the small folder. The Doctor held it in his hand and concentrated for a moment before handing it back to her. Clara looked down and saw the paper—at least to her eyes—looked like press credentials.

“You spelled my name wrong,” she chuckled. “Only one W in Oswald. But seriously, where are you taking me?”

The bass drum-like thump signalled the TARDIS’ arrival … somewhere.

“Are we dressed okay?” Clara asked.

“We’re reporters. We don’t need to be dressed all fancy,” the Doctor said as he slipped his psychic paper, “blank” side out, into the pocket of his coat. He led the way to the doors and popped his head out. “Closet. Good aim.”

Outside the closet was a large glass atrium filled with a hubbub of activity as dozens of men and women in business suits jockeyed for a view of the stage. A line of chairs crossed the platform, each one holding a distinguished-looking individual. Clara gazed at a few of the faces and noticed something familiar about a few of them. She still wasn’t sure where she was; she overheard a few British accents in the crowd, but the flags on the stage were from several different countries; Clara identified a Union Jack and the American Stars and Stripes. She unconsciously started to count the stars, but the Doctor tapped her on the arm and shook his head, no.

A young, nervous-looking man with strikingly blue hair took the microphone at the central dais, speaking in a light Scottish accent. “Good evening, and thank you for coming. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Royal Space Probe Agency, we’d like to welcome former US President Courtney Woods-Blinovitch who will be presenting the first US/UK joint Medal of Scientific Achievement to the crew of the _HMS Elizabeth II_ , whose successful voyage to Titan has opened new doors to space exploration for the people of the Earth. Madame President?”

Clara tried not to cheer as she saw the distinguished former president rise from her seat and take the microphone. Older, with considerably less hair, she was still recognizably her one-time student (and two-time TARDIS traveller), Courtney.

“This award is very special to me because I get to present it to not only a group of brave, creative scientists and space explorers, but I’m proud to say several of them are also my classmates from Coal Hill Academy in Shoreditch,” Courtney Woods-Blinovitch said.

“What?” Clara whispered as she turned to the Doctor. He just smiled back. 

Courtney read out the names and Clara was amazed to indeed recognize several of her students—including one who she’d actually thought would amount to nothing and was headed to prison. One of the astronauts, Commander Ryan Jones, came to the mic and Clara had a moment of unreality pass over her as she remembered confiscating his chewing gum in class the morning before—from her perspective, anyway.

“Thank you, Madame President—or may I call you Courtney?” Ryan said to laughter and a broad smile from Courtney. “On behalf of my crew I’d like to accept this award, and dedicate it to one of our teachers from Coal Hill. Although we gave her no end of trouble—some more than others,” he chanced a wink at one of his colleagues, who blushed, “Clara Oswald was truly a special, gifted teacher, who made our lives special in turn, even though we didn’t realize it at the time. We miss her and accept this award in her honour. It was ten years ago when we …”

With this, Ryan Jones continued his speech, but the Doctor was already guiding Clara back to the TARDIS, her eyes filling with tears.

“You see, Clara, you do make a difference,” the Doctor said as he opened the door and let Clara in. He looked back at her as he set the TARDIS in motion once more and saw her beaming smile.

“So, you weren’t making it up when you said Courtney would become president, then?” she said, sniffing away the tears.

“Now why would I lie to you about something like that?” the Doctor looked affronted.

“And several of my students get to visit Titan.”

“ _Sans_ TARDIS, I might add. They do it the hard way, the wonderfully _human_ way,” the Doctor grinned.

“No help from you at all?”

The Doctor put up his hand, “Time Lord’s honour. I mean, okay, I stopped the Rani from interfering with the launch, but to be fair that was back when I was all teeth and curls and big scarves and I hadn’t met you yet, so how was I to know? But the rest of it was their doing. And you heard them—they owed a lot of it to you. An English teacher who just happened to have a bad day and wants to give it all up.”

Clara’s smile didn’t falter, “Thank you, Doctor. That meant a lot to me.”

The Doctor tried to say something, but shrugged instead.

“I suppose,” Clara added, “I shouldn’t be too concerned about them talking about me in the past tense?”

“Well, this was some years into your future. You probably retired or moved to another school or became King of something by this time,” the Doctor said.

“You don’t know?”

The Doctor’s expression darkened. “I’d never want to find out.” She reached out and looped her arm in his and he brightened up.

“Where to next?” she asked.

“Somewhere peaceful, somewhere quiet. Somewhere you can recharge your batteries.”

“That garden planet you’re always talking about?”

“Nah, I’ll save that for later. Maui.”

Clara let go of the Doctor and laughed. “What, no Eye of Orion or Obsidian VI or some exotic far-off world?”

“Sometimes, Earth is just exotic enough.”

“Agreed.”

The thump of the TARDIS announced their arrival.

“Go on,” the Doctor said. “Take a look outside. If we’ve landed in the middle of a Cyberman invasion, I’ll take off before I see it and become committed.”

Clara laughed, “Yes, boss,” and jogged for the door.

“Hey, that’s my line,” the Doctor called after her.

Clara inched the doors open and, evidently, what she saw met with her approval. She returned to the console and crooked her finger at the Doctor in a “come-hither” gesture, then turned on her heels and headed back to the exit.

She suddenly stopped at the threshold of the TARDIS and turned around. The Doctor, who’d been looking down for a second, entered her personal space before he could stop. They were so close, Clara had to look up. She put a warm hand on his chest, arresting him from moving away. She rubbed his lapel between her fingers.

“You know, Doctor, if this Time Lording thing doesn’t work out, you should set up a psychiatric practice. You’re damn good at it.”

The Doctor smiled. “I suppose if I do I’ll have to start charging more than five cents.”

Clara frowned. “Do I actually owe you five cents?”

“Well, I suppose I can put it on credit. Special customer.”

“Wait a second. Have you any clue how many nickels you owe _me_?”

“A few?”

“More than a few. A bucketful of ‘fews.’”

Their personal space collapsed into an embrace as they looked through the doors of the TARDIS into the tranquil beachside park where they’d landed.

“So, Ms. Oswald, how do I repay a bucketful of ‘fews’?” He looked down at her and smiled.

Clara cocked her head for a moment, then raised herself up on tiptoes and gave the end of the Doctor’s nose a quick kiss.

“I’ll think of something.”

**Author's Note:**

> Donna and the Doctor visited Agatha Christie on her deathbed in a deleted scene from "The Unicorn and the Wasp".
> 
> Courtney marrying Blinovitch and becoming President of the USA was established in "Kill the Moon".


End file.
